by Dakota Pratt
They had fought for three days straight. No food or water or back-up, and no rest for the wicked. Just the three of them against the Senior Partners, two vampires and a demon fending off the forces of hell. The irony was not lost on her.
And they had won.
Illyria didn't quite understand how. How she, Angel, and Spike had taken out hundreds of thousands of vampires, demons, and dragons. It was an army the likes of which she'd never seen, surpassing even those she'd held under her own command so many millennia ago. Once upon a time, she had been powerful - no, that was not quite right - she had been power. Now she was barely immortal, but even still, she'd taken out a small city worth of demons before she had collapsed to the ground, unable to fight any longer.
Gunn had died, shortly after the fight began. She had known he would, felt it in her heart of hearts. Of the two on this earth she had found solace in, both had died. She wondered why her presence seemed to push people along their fated paths just a little farther, forcing them to meet their ends just a bit quicker than they otherwise would have. She wondered what that said about her. About this body she had taken.
Perhaps she was being punished.
Disturbed, she pushed the thought to the back of her mind.
"Are you all right?" Angel asked. She did not understand why he kept his voice lowered, as if he were afraid of being overheard. It seemed that similar expressions of concern were well-placed in a procession such as this. Men and women, most of whom she had never seen, milled about the hotel lobby suited in black from head to toe, much like herself.
No. Of course she wasn't all right, but there was no way for her to express the turmoil she felt inside. She'd never felt the urge for such restraint as a goddess, and wondered if in her mind, she was truly becoming human. In any case, she gave a traditionally human response. A lie.
"I'll be fine," she said in the light drawl she adopted when she wanted to pass. For the moment, she was Winifred Burkle again. But the form no longer felt right to her, no longer seemed natural. It was not rightfully hers, she knew, and her slipping in and out of it as if it were just a garment disturbed Wesley to no end.
But Wesley was not here anymore. Which brought them back to the hotel lobby, and the memorial ceremony. For Wesley. For Charles Gunn. For the thousands of others who had perished in the City of Angels once it had become overrun with demons. Such irony she once would have savored, but now it felt bitter on her tongue.
A hand touched her arm, and she turned away from Angel to see two familiar faces. Fred's parents, Roger and Trish.
"Mom! Daddy," she said, trying to mix pleasant surprise into the undercurrent of grief she carried in her voice. She opened her arms and embraced the patriarch of the Burkle family, then the other.
"Sweetheart, what's happened here?"
"So much," she said, wiping away a holographic tear and flashing a sad smile. "So much since you've been gone."
"We're glad you're all right," Roger said.
"But we're so sorry to hear about your friends," the woman who thought she was Illyria's mother added.
Illyria idly wondered how and when they should ever learn the truth. She could keep it from them forever without fault, but she was beginning to understand Wesley's position on the matter. It wasn't fair to them. And yet, if they did not know, they would not hurt. Right now, she wanted desperately to save them from experiencing what she felt after having lost Wesley. If this pain, this torment, was any indication of what the humans called love - and if Fred's parents loved her a fraction as much as they seemed to - she would not inflict that upon them. Could not. Never, in all her eternal life, had she been so sadistic, and she knew she never could be.
Strange. She was becoming softer. More emotional. More vulnerable, more attached. And yet she did not feel weaker, not exactly. It would take her a long time to realize that underneath it all, she felt stronger.
She let them lead her off into a corner, and sat and talked with them for some time. So simple to fool them. It seemed wrong that she could be Fred this completely, this perfectly. That every idiosyncrasy and nuance and everything about Winifred Burkle that had made her an individual could be replicated so easily - it was a sobering thought to Illyria. She was beginning to accept the fact that someday, somehow, she, too, may die. And she would be just as expendable as Fred. As Charles. As Wesley.
People were not snowflakes. They were not perfect and unique, but random and archetypal. Only so many kinds before you ran out of individuals. Only so many traits before they were recycled once again.
She excused herself, too distracted to be polite. They worried, she knew, because they were the type that worried. Just two more specks amidst billions. Now she was also one of those specks.
How could she live like this? Live with her own insignificance, her own pain and loss? Was this what humans did every day? Wake up, even when it was the last thing they wanted? Follow their routines, even when they had no promise of release from the suffering?
She was headed for the restroom to gather her thoughts, regain her composure, when a distinct figure entering the lobby caught her eye. A man, elderly in age by human standards. Gray-haired, well-dressed, very refined. She turned and stalked toward him suddenly, in long angry strides. How dare he.
How dare he show his face, after the damage he had done. How dare he even think of coming, of pretending to mourn, when he had never expressed a single concern in his life.
She appeared in front of him in what must have seemed like the blink of an eye, placing her seemingly delicate human hands upon his shoulders and dragging him around, sending him flying backward into the nearest wall.
"You are not welcomed here!" she roared, and the floor shook with her anger. Rage began to boil up beneath her skin. She was no longer a god, but she was not quite human. This, this was what is was meant to be. To feel like. "How dare you presume to set foot in this town."
She did not drop her guise, not yet. Keep him in the dark for just a bit longer. Better to let him think he was assaulted by the angry girlfriend.
"Fred!" Angel's voice cut through the crowd like a knife. "Fred! Calm down!" He was at her side within moments, one hand on her arm in what appeared to be a calming gesture to any onlookers, but he held her with all the force he could muster. It wouldn't be enough to restrain her, not if she did not wish to be restrained. He knew this. She did, as well. But she took in a deep breath and simply glared at the man, waiting for some filthy excuse to leave his mouth.
"Watch your insolence, young lady," was all he said, brushing the plaster off of his suit and standing with the help of a bellboy.
"You have no business here," she spat. If her words could injure him. If only her anger could set him aflame and scald the flesh from his pathetically mortal bones. If she could diminish him to naught but ash with only the power of her eyes, she would do it, with every god, every devil, and every Old One as her witness.
"I have every business here, Miss Burkle," he said. "I am his father."
She barely remembered to maintain her persona as she fished for her next words. It was cruel, to channel her anger through the staple of this mortal coil, to act with diplomacy. And to remember that she had to speak to him as if she truly were Miss Burkle. "You were never even a father to him in life. How dare you claim such a title in his death." Her voice was soft and silky, like rose petals with the promise of hidden thorns.
She prayed he would try her patience. She prayed he would give her a reason not only to kill him but to justify his death to these onlookers. To have her lauded for the death of the eldest Wyndam-Pryce. It was true she had never met him before, but she had never needed to. Late at night, when Wesley would not sleep for fear of his own dreams, they would talk. And at times he would talk of the man who stood before her now, who so arrogantly called himself father to one such as Wesley.
She had come to hate him quickly, through Wesley's stories and recountings, for reasons she could not fully understand at that time. But she suspected that she was beginning to. If what she felt for Wesley truly had been love - a suspicion that grew deeper in her chest with every passing day - then the reality that his man would cause one she loved such torment, would execute such abuses of the mind and soul. It was beyond arrogance, beyond sin.
"You are out of line, Winifred," he said to her, and she laughed. Her laugh echoed through the lobby, ricocheting off the walls and sending chills down the spines of every puny mortal upon whose ears it fell. They all fell silent, and she could feel the attention shift to her.
"Fred," Angel hissed, and his tone was a mixture of urgent and angered. "I think it's time we get some air."
She wanted to kill him in that moment. This man needed to be broken, and as there were no others willing to break him, the burden fell to her. Who was he to come between her and her duties? She wanted to kill the patriarch. She would enjoy it. She could make it last for weeks.
But something stopped her. Something that was not Angel, did not come from outside her, but within. She did not know what, did not know why. She hoped that in time, she would come to understand more of these impulses, these urges that came and went, crashed and ebbed like waves upon the shore.
"Forgive me, Mister Wyndam-Pryce," she said. "For I do not suffer fools lightly." She turned and allowed Angel to escort her from the building. And when she left, she was a little bit more human than she had been before.
Somehow, it was not an unpleasant realization.
It was a gradual change, she knew. To reshape herself to fit this world, to leave behind her past and start anew. To become a little less Old One every day, and a little more human. It could take years, or decades, or even eons.
But she had time.